Challenging conventional understandings of international politics, this volume pushes the boundaries of the social sciences by engaging with alternative critical approaches and innovatively and provocatively addressing previously disregarded aspects of international politics.

This volume presents the critical perspectives of feminists, critical race theorists, and queer and postcolonial theorists who question the adoption of European norms in the postcolonial world and whether such norms are enabling for disenfranchised communities or if they simply reinforce relations of domination and exploitation. It examines how postcolonial interventions alter the study of politics and society both in the postcolony and in Euro-America, as well as of the power relations between them. Challenging conventional understandings of international politics, this volume pushes the boundaries of the social sciences by engaging with alternative critical approaches and innovatively and provocatively addressing previously disregarded aspects of international politics. The fourteen contributions in this volume focus on the silencing and exclusion of vulnerable groups from claims of freedom, equality and rights, while highlighting postcolonial-queer-feminist struggles for transnational justice, radical democracy and decolonization, drawing on in-depth empirically-informed analyses of processes and struggles in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. They address political and social topics including global governance and development politics; neo-colonialism, international aid and empire; resistance, decolonization and the Arab Spring; civil society and social movement struggles; international law, democratization and subalternity; body politics and green imperialism. By drawing on other disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, this book both enriches and expands the discipline of political science and international relations. Primary readership for this volume will be academics and students concerned with globalization studies, postcolonial theory, gender studies, and international relations, as well as political activists and policy-makers concerned with social and transnational justice, human rights, democracy, gender justice and women’s rights.

“Negotiating Normativity is a theoretically provocative collection of postcolonial feminist scholarship on the legacy of Eurocentric normative universalisms and their decolonial re-imaginings. Arguing for a “pluralisation and diversification of the narratives of normative legitimacy,” (Introduction, p. 9) individual contributors explore insightful theoretical concepts and discursive frames like “medical relativism as a form of governmentality,” “subaltern perspectives on anarchist autonomy,” and the “figure of the cultural broker” to address the appropriation, contestation, and transformation of norms in particular geopolitical contexts. An original intervention in ongoing debates in international relations, political theory, and feminist/queer and critical race studies, this excellent book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in the legacies of European colonialism, and questions of resistance, decolonization, and freedom.” (Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Distinguished Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Syracuse University and Author of “Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity” (2003))

Provides an in-depth analysis and postcolonial critique of the Enlightenment norms of human rights, democracy, international law, sovereignty, secularism, justice, political modernity, and development Illustrates how norms regulate and legitimize power and authority, but also how they are challenged, appropriated, and applied to contest these very systems of rule Presents case studies that take into account the complex intersections and interconnections between the global North and the global South as well as the influence of the transnational Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras